ElementTree - Why not part of the core?

[Steven Bethard]

doug.bromley at gmail.com wrote:
> ElementTree on the other hand provides incredibly easy access to XML
> elements and works in a more Pythonic way.  Why has the API not been
> included in the Python core?

While I fully agree that ElementTree is far more Pythonic than the 
dom-based stuff in the core, this issue has been discussed on 
python-dev[1].  Fredrik Lundh's response:

     shipping stable versions of ElementTree/cElementTree (or PIL, or
     python-doc, or exemaker, or what else you might find useful) with
     official Python releases is perfectly okay.

     moving the main trunk and main development over to the Python CVS is
     another thing, entirely.

I think some people were hoping that instead of adding these things to 
the standard library, we would come up with a better package manager 
that would make adding these things to your local library much simpler.

STeVe

[1]http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2005-06-01_2005-06-15.html#reorganising-the-standard-library-again